Warm sounding ss power amps

jeff rowland s amps are 4u

Since you didn't indicate what budget you have, I can suggest to you the following ss amps: McCormack DNA-0.5 or DNA-1.0, Classe CA-10 and Plinius SA-100II. These amps have enough muscle to drive almost any speakers out there and have a warm presentation AS WELL as being transparent/detailed. As for the brightness factor, it really boils down to one component or a combination of different things (as mentioned earlier). Although, some people have indicated that a room has as much play in bright-sounding systems as the components themselves, then again, if the whole synergy of the system is INHERENTLY bright, then room manipulation could only help so much.

Check out the Clayton Amplifier line...they have a remarkable, warm but detailed, tubey quality midrange.

Very few modern quality SS amps are bright sounding, the single biggest cause of treble problems in a CD based system is you DAC, getting a quality DAC with smooth filtering will do more than anything else to give you a smooth clean relaxed treble.

ICs, power cords, and AC conditioning are next source of treble problems. Proper matching will remove distortion
and tonal imbalances. I prefer copper cables for their more natural tonal balance.

Finally your pre-amp, amp do have some influence on preceived warmth. Class A and Mosfet SS are warmer sounding
than bi-polar output stage designs, but this is just in general. For instance Sam Tellig recently reviewed and liked the warm sound of the Belles Hot Rod amp, which is a mosfet design and contrasted that with McCormack and Musical
Fidelity which are both bi-polar output.

Both Muse and Belles are mosfet SS amps, not sure what the Conrad Johnson SS are but they are usually rated as warm by reviewers. I have owned mosfet amps in the past, but now have bi-polar SS amp with good DAC and proper cables/AC conditioning and enjoy detail and quickness along with smooth relaxed treble.

Johnny7, this is a classic example of needing to be careful as far as the language used to describe the sound of a system and the potential solution to the perceived problem. You say that your system is bright and you want to warm it up. The opposite of bright is dark and the opposite of warm is cold. Can we assume that your system sounds cold to you? If yes, that may have nothing to do with brightness as far as I'm concerned. I have owned components that were dark but cold sounding; conversely I have had components that were bright but actually quite warm sounding. My suggestion to you is to make sure that what you object to in the sound of your system is not harshness rather than brightness. The most common suggestion in your case is to add a tube amp, but many tube amps in my experience sound "brighter" than some solid state amps. They do however tend to be softer sounding and more forgiving of harshness elsewhere in the system. Perhaps a complete description of the evolution of my amp ownwership and perceived sound characteristics will help. First amp owned: Hafler200(ss)somewhat bright, dry, cold, a little harsh. -- B&KST140(ss) much warmer, softer, dark, slightly dry -- PS Audio200 (ss) VERY cold, uninvolving, somewhat bright -- BEL1001(ss)much brighter, tense, smoothest (lack of harshness) yet -- Berning 2100(tube) brightest yet, most detailed yet, NOT cold, very dynamic -- Manley Reference200 monos (tube) just right!. Remember that this was all in the context of my system. Good luck and regards.